Against Home Rule (1912) eBook

country people have much time on their hands, and are
apt to spend it in brooding over bygone wrongs.
But over the past not Jove himself hath power, and
it is for the future that we are responsible.
From Wellington onwards Ireland has given many great
soldiers to the British Army, and it is the classes
from which they spring that it is now proposed to
abandon. Under Home Rule the flag would be a foreign
emblem, useless to protect the weak in Ireland, and
perhaps available to oppress them. England would
have cast off her friends and gained none in exchange.
Nothing will conciliate the revolutionary faction in
Ireland, and there is every reason to think that it
would become the strongest. Modern Ireland is
the creation of English policy, and many wrong things
were formerly done, but for a long time amends have
been making. If England, from weariness or for
the sake of Party advantage, abandons her supporters,
they will have no successors. Ireland will be
more troublesome than ever, and the crime will receive
its fitting punishment.

X

HOME RULE AND NAVAL DEFENCE

BY ADMIRAL LORD CHARLES BERESFORD, M.P.

Ireland under Home Rule must, in the event of war,
be regarded as a potentially hostile country.

In this statement resides the dominant factor of the
situation viewed from the naval and military point
of view. It is not asserted that the government
of Ireland would be disloyal; but it is asserted that
the authorities charged with the defence of his Majesty’s
dominions cannot afford to take risks when the safety
of the country is at stake. That such risks must
exist under the circumstances indicated, is obvious
to all those who have studied the speeches of the
leaders of the Irish Nationalist party, in which they
have unequivocally declared their intention to rid
Ireland of English rule, and in which they extol as
heroes such men as Theobald Wolfe Tone, who intrigued
with France against England in order to achieve Irish
independence, and who took his own life rather than
receive the just reward of his deeds. That some
among the Irish Nationalist leaders have recently professed
their devotion to the British Empire cannot be regarded
by serious persons as a relevant consideration.
The demand for Home Rule is in fact a demand for separation
from the United Kingdom or it is nothing. Naval
officers are accustomed to deal with facts rather
than with words.

In the great sea-wars of the past, Ireland has always
been regarded by the enemy as providing the base for
a flank attack upon England. Had King Louis XIV.
rightly used his opportunities, the army of King William
would have been cut off from its base in England, and
would have been destroyed by reinforcements arriving
from France to assist King James II. There is
no more concise presentment of the case than the account
of it given by Admiral Mahan in “The Influence
of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783.”